September 1, 2005

PRESS RELEASE

San Juan Symphony announces its 2005-2006 SEASON: Insight Insound

The San Juan Symphony announces its 2005-2006 season, Insight Insound. Music Director, Arthur Post, has designed this season to offer listeners new insights into musical styles, forms, characters and colors. “For me classical music is alive and contemporary. Composers a hundred and two hundred years ago were inspired by the same things that inspire us now – we’re just wearing different clothes these days. I love delving into this music and designing programs that allow the audience to hear, feel and understand this connection to our past. Each program is based on an idea that is traced from a great classic to a modern American piece.”

The season opens October 1st and 2nd with Classical Balance. Post says he has been wanting to present a concert that focuses on the beauty, simplicity and optimism of the classical style, and its influence today. “You wouldn’t know it from looking in the media – where it’s all extreme-this and extreme-that, but our culture today, and even our form of democratic government, owes a great deal to the scientific optimism, logic and modesty of the18th century Enlightenment. With clear textures and sing-able tunes, the music of the Classical era expresses those values. This music is about pleasing the ear, not about staring into the emotional abyss.” Concertmaster Mikylah Myers McTeer shares the solo spotlight with Seattle Symphony violist, Mara Gearman in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. The concert also includes music by Haydn, Brahms, Stravinsky, and Michael Torke.

On November 12th and 13th, In Sync :Inspired Collaborations will bring together a number of guest artists to collaborate with the Symphony. Arthur Post says he’s very happy to present the first guest conductor during his tenure, Matthew Savery, who is music director of the Bozeman Symphony in Montana. “I hope to present a guest conductor every other season – everybody enjoys the variety.” The Durango Choral Society will have the opportunity to shine in Brahms’ Song of Fate and Bernstein’s lively Chichester Psalms, which also features young Durango vocalist, Dallas Padoven. The concert closes with Dvorak’s Cello Concerto, with soloist Steven Thomas, principal cellist of the New Haven Symphony.

Post is back on the podium February 18th and 19th for Spanish Roots, which draws on the Spanish heritage of the Southwest. The concert is full of bright colors and dark passions: music from Spain, music reflecting Spanish-American history, and even music about Spain from French composers who loved the vitality of Spanish culture. Featured artists include vocalist Gemma Coma-Alabert, who the New York Times called a “spitfire mezzosoprano” in her American debut at Aspen this summer. From Albuquerque, the Symphony has also invited flamenco dancers Joaquin and Marisol Enciñias, and the guitarist and composer José Valle. The concert will open with the annual Side-by-Side with high school musicians, playing Bizet’s Carmen Suite.

In the regular season finale, April 22nd and 23rd, Norman Krieger returns to play Rachmaninoff’s monumental Piano Concerto No. 3. The program, The Last Romantic highlights the emotional excess and fatalism of the romantic era. Post says, “We live in a very romantic culture today. 19th century Romanticism never really died, and its alive and well in television, films and classical music. The Romantics were enthralled with the irrational, subconscious, supernatural, hyper-emotional and sensual, with dreams, myths, and artistic fantasy. It was quasi-religious, with the artist as high priest. Live on the edge and die young, preferably for love. You see this same mindset all over advertising these days – from the animal power of SUVs to the purple sensuality of perfumes. Nike says “Just do it,” meaning, don’t think about it. Even bankers advertise themselves as “passionate” about their business. It’s The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. The media tells us we should all be jungle survivors living our spontaneous animal passions. Thank god most of us don’t have the constitution for that!” Still, Post has put together a program of music based on these romantic ideas – an excerpt from Wagner’s mythic and epic opera Ring of the Nibelungen, coupled with Lizst’s The Black Gondola, which is based on a Liszt’s premonition in a dream of Wagner’s death. American neo-Romantic Samuel Barber is represented with his beloved Adagio for Strings, and the Rachmaninoff closes off the program.

This season the San Juan Symphony will also introduce a new concert series, the Adams Foundation Piano Recital Series. The Adams Foundation in New York sponsors recitals by renowned pianists in less heavily populated areas, and its support allows the Symphony to present two recitals this winter in new venues, Saint Columba Church in Durango and the newly refurbished Totah Theater in Farmington. On January 13 and 14, Steven Mayer will appear in an innovative program ranging from the virtuoso classics of Chopin and Liszt to music of the jazz greats, Fats Waller and Art Tatum. Mr. Mayer is a regular soloist with major orchestras in the United States and Europe, a Naxos recording artist, and his work has been described by the New York Times as “piano playing at its most awesome.” On March 17 and 18 acclaimed duo-pianists, Richard and John Contigulia, will present a program of classical and romantic music including, Mozart, Schubert and folk song settings by Percy Grainger. Their lifelong commitment to popularizing the great body of music for two pianists has earned them numerous honors, including a Top 10 Billboard Best Seller for their recording of the Beethoven-Liszt 9th Symphony.

Also new this year, San Juan Symphony violinist and Suzuki teacher, Tennille Taylor, will join the staff in the position of Education Coordinator. She oversees a growing Youth Education program that serves students in Aztec, Bayfield, Bloomfield, Durango, Farmington, Ignacio, Kirtland, and Shiprock public and private schools, as well as homeschoolers. Among other activities, the Symphony this year will produce its Youth Concert for 5th and 6th graders on February 21st, host a Side-by-Side for select high school musicians on its February 18 and 19 concerts, and provide teachers with lesson plans and coupons for discounted student tickets for the four regular subscription concerts.

For tickets, please call the box offices: Durango 970-247-7657, Farmington 505-599-1148, and for the Adams Foundation Recital Series call the SJS office: 970-382-9753 or 505-564-3600.